Product Description

In Photography After Frank, former New York Times writer and picture editor Philip Gefter narrates the tale of contemporary photography, beginning at the pivotal moment when Robert Frank commenced his seminal works of the 1950s. Along the way, he connects the dots of photography's evolution into what it is today, forging links between its episodes to reveal unsuspected leaps. Gefter takes Frank's The Americans as a decisive challenge to photographic objectivity, with its grainy, off-hand-seeming spontaneity and its documentation of life beyond the picket fence. Thus viewed, The Americans provides Gefter with a bridge to the phenomenon of the staged document" and Postmodernism's further challenge to image fidelity. Other areas of discussion include photojournalism, the recent diversity of portraiture styles, the influence of private and corporate collections on curatorial decisions and how the market shapes art making. Throughout Photography After Frank, Gefter deftly demonstrates Frank's legacy in the work of dozens of important individual artists who followed in his wake, from Lee Friedlander and Nan Goldin to Stephen Shore and Ryan McGinley. The book includes texts written exclusively for this publication as well as essays drawn from Gefter's critical writings, reviews and even obituaries. Photography After Frank offers a page-turning approach to a subject that will appeal to students and art world aficionados alike."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #136109 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-01
• Released on: 2009-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

About the Author
PHILIP GEFTER was a New York Times staff member for over fifteen years. Early in his career, he was a picture editor at Fortune and GEO and an assistant editor at Aperture. He writes regularly for various publications and is a founding member of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. Gefter has a BFA in painting and photography from Pratt Institute, New York.

Customer Reviews

Art Appreciation Only
I started reading it about a week ago and have made it half way through. Though I have not completed the book, I feel as though my review won't change much once I reach the end (if I ever do).

The writer, Philip Gefter, wrote for the New York times and several other publications in his career. Each of the essays is a review that he has written in the past 8 years or so about various shows going on along with a brief history of each photographer. I went into this book looking for some great dialogue about contemporary photography and instead found a book about photography, or photographer, appreciation. It isn't that I have a problem with art appreciation books, but the way Photography After Frank was marketed made me think otherwise. Each essay is about four pages in length and is organized like this:

1: A paragraph dedicated to saying how awesome that photographer is.

2: The connection to Frank or whoever else (but there is a lot of Frank).

3: An extremely basic explanation of what the work is "about".

4: And then more about how awesome that artist is.

My main issue with this book is that it is not saying anything. There is no opinion, there is no statement or over arching theme here, it is just a retelling of the major players in photography since Robert Frank. The only reason this book should ever be picked up is by people who want to learn about the basic, and I mean BASIC, history of photography of the past 50 or so years.

This book just furthers my issue with most things going on in art right now. We need to realize that modernism is over, we have to be okay with moving on, but yet we still sit here and continue thinking about art the same way that we did when Robert Frank made The Americans!

I don't have much else to say without repeating myself on how disappointed I am with this purchase. But if you want to learn about the history of photography this will do it for you.

"Photography After Frank"
I highly recommend "Photography After Frank". It gave me a really good grasp of the landscape of contemporary photography by tracing its roots back to Robert Frank. The essays are well written and insightful and devoid of artspeak. As a whole, a really good explanation of the way the photographic image has mutated and transformed with new technologies, and, also, evolved alongside painting.

Essential Reading
[...]

When people ask me what they need to do to understand the world of fine art photography, I tell them: go to galleries, preview auctions, and read the photography criticism in The New York Times. The Times suggestion was in large part because of the timely, eloquent, and provocative writing of Philip Gefter, the picture editor and photography writer for the paper's Arts & Leisure section. Gefter has now left the paper although he continues to contribute as a freelance and you'll now see his byline in other publications. But the good news is that Aperture have gathered 39 of his pieces in one volume that no-one interested in photography should be without.

As you can see above, it has a great cover featuring Ryan McGinley's "Dakota Hair" from 2004. From there, much like the picture, it's an exhilarating and breezy journey though modern photography. Stephen Shore is "Walker Evans - stoned"! On Richard Misrach "Don't let the beauty of Richard Misrach fool you. ... What lies beneath the surface is more to the point." And from an essay on Vince Aletti's magazine collection, "One Saturday afternoon, I accompanied Vince on his rounds and, after nine galleries, with flagging energy I begged off. But Vince was not finished for the day. He is dogged apparently insatiable in his quest to know what's out there, to see what artists are doing. I have come to understand that his commitment to looking at art stems from the same impulse to collect: know thy culture, know thyself."

Now that's summer reading!